The process of animation

I’ve been asked quiet a lot about the recent Snow Leopard animation so here’s a little post about it. The protection of endangered species and their habitat is an issue close to my heart so I wanted to create an eye-catching visual to promote the cause. I had no experience in making animation but I got the gist of it from watching old Disney videos of illustrators and their process. Anyways, the best way to learn is by being thrown in the water and learning to swim. I just wanted to make it old school by hand, as it was done at Disney or Ghibli studios…so that the quality the moving image is raw, imperfect, organic.

I created a light table by attaching a crappy lamp to the bottom of my glass coffee-table, drew 19 frames individually with a black pencil, scanned them in sequence and applied final edits and clean-up in Photoshop using Wacom. I went on to draw falling snow, re-drawing the fall of each flake in the 19 frames. Finally, I added the vegetation and made the leaves move in the breeze.

The overall project took several weeks to complete when I include summarizing ideas on how in the world am I going to make this cub white against the background and what style to illustrate it in. The best part is seeing it all come together : ) and having the process sheets as a tangible part of this animation.